Around the beginning of the twentieth century, most women gave birth at home. As modern hospitals gained popularity during the 1920s, women were encouraged to seek professional health care for themselves and their newborns in the supervised environments of these new hospitals. By 1936, approximately one-third of all live births occurred in hospitals, and by 1945, approximately eighty percent of women gave birth in hospitals. Although tremendous advances have been made in the field of medicine, hospital apparel—including infant garments—has changed little.
For years, the traditional infant garment has been a short shirt ending at the waistline. Typically, some type of undergarment, such as a diaper, has also been used for additional protection against soiling. The short shirt is open in the front with two side panels crossing over one another for closing and fastening the shirt shut. Early shirts were shut in the back with ties. These ties were later replaced with snap fasteners. The short shirt allows a cloth diaper to be used, thereby decreasing the possibility of soiling the upper garment and reducing the frequency of laundering. Although rubber or plastic pants can also be used with short shirts, their use has typically been discouraged because they can contribute to improper air circulation and increased susceptibility to the development of rashes.
Another type of traditional undergarment for infants is the undershirt. Undershirts for newborns have front tabs that can be fastened to a cloth diaper with safety pins. This forms a full-length, warm, cloth garment that can be secured in place so as to not ride up on the infant. As disposable diapers were slowly introduced into nurseries in the late 1970s, however, the front tabs have been omitted since potentially hazardous safety pins were no longer necessary.
Currently, hospital garments for infants have the same waist-length undershirt with cross-over front panels that snap shut. Such garments typically require the use of a separate, disposable diaper. A drawback of these types of garments is that crossing the front panels over and snapping them shut can be confusing and cumbersome. Since the garment is separate from the diaper, another drawback of the infant garment commonly in use today is that the shirt may tend to ride up under the infant's armpits. This unnecessarily exposes portions of the surface of an infant's body and can contribute to a loss of body heat.
Since the body temperatures of infants should normally be maintained within a very narrow range, the effects of heat loss on infants can be especially dangerous. Excessive heat loss stemming from the use of existing infant garments can, for example, contribute to the onset of hypothermia. As a result, newborn care, policies, and techniques attempt to thermo-regulate the body of newborns by achieving a healthy and an efficient balance between heat loss and heat production. Because the garments worn by infants sometimes may not always effectively maintain a proper body temperature, however, it can become necessary to expend significant resources to create appropriate temperature-controlled neonatal environments.
Another drawback of current hospital garments is that they can impede patient care. Specifically, the garment itself can impede access to various locations on an infant's body which may require monitoring or treatment. Current standards of patient care, however, emphasize the responsibility of hospital personnel to easily assess patients and quickly identify real and potential problems.
Therefore, there is a need in the industry for hospital garments, especially garments for infants, that more effectively preserve body heat while providing improved access for the assessment and care of the patient wearing the garment.